Run with the Hunt

An equally viable question: does it matter? I’m not saying it doesn’t, I’m just asking you, because the afterlife tends to be a pretty personal thing even in religions where such ideas are clearly laid out—which they certainly are not for Gaelpols.

A lot of people in the GP realm of thinking don’t see reincarnation in the usual sense—that is, the sense that Hinduism and Buddhism, namely, have imparted upon the western New Age sphere. Not to say that it would be wrong to do so. Personally, I think of it as two (or more—who knows?) realms, for the lack of a better word. You live your life here and then you die and you return to some genuine, essential form of yourself, you get to look at your life in comparison with all of the previous ones, and you get to examine them all objectively. Then you “die” or something, and you move on to the next life. But I know Wolf, on the other hand, has an altogether different take that I’m not going to do her the injustice of trying to describe.

The point is, like just about everything else within Gaelpol, there are conflicting ideas. Even in antiquity. There is literally no right way even to be Recon. So back to my original question—I would argue that the answer to this doesn’t matter. There are certain spiritual, theological questions that people ask regardless of faith. And the answers to those questions aren’t interesting, so much as the reasons for asking them. This, the question of the afterlife, is one of those times.

—Korrigan

I'd agree with Korrigan as well, the afterlife is such a very personal idea that it's difficult to tack down within GP and honestly it very much depends. One can get into metaphysical multiverse theoretical discussions for days and still not be able to really articulate how they understand something, so it's honestly a matter of figuring out where you stand on that.

Realistically, I think that if a faith has a pretty laid out methodology behind the afterlife, then you should be able to understand and follow that paradigm, though I personally could suggest that even in Christianity, which has a much more decided track on what happens after one dies could still be a part of a reincarnate cycle that isn't quite addressed in the Book.

No, you don't have to choose one of the three. There are a handfull of people who are exclusively Irish Polytheists, but then they call themselves such. Gaelic Polytheists are far more abundant, and they generally use one of the three as a sort of baseline (usually Irish, rarely Manx) and suplement the myths they deal with with those of the other two. The cultures were similar enough to one another, and were diverse enough in and of themselves individually, that the distinction between them is actually relatively arbitrary. Which is not to say that they were the same, merely very similar; thus, in theory, justifying the use of the term Reconstructionism. I hope that answers your question.

I've spent a few days blog combing to compile all of the resource posts and lists that I can get my hands on because we don't have a good catalogue of them anywhere and at least I can get them all into this post.

One of the nice things about this blog is that the mods have all vetted their own sources and article materials because we're all hard edge recons and have very little tolerance for more "neo-pagan" practices. With that being said, it has to be understood that much of the information available on Celtic mythos is somewhat fragmented because it was all documented by monks who had relocated to those areas. Being somewhat flexible in how you actually practice is going to save you quite a lot of headache.

For general Celtic Polytheist sources I would give you these:

Celtic Paganism: A Primers Reading List

How We Define Celtic

On Sourcing Materials and Yourself ( korrigantsionnach authored this, I'm just linking a reblog because I can't find the original)

The Wheel of the Year and How We Address It

Paganachd's FAQ

Lebor Gabala Erenn

The Tain

As for source on The Morrigan, both of the tags on my blogs here and here (which may have some duplicated information, I am sorry) hold some of the better Tumblr based articles available on her. They're mostly simple write-ups but I do link my sources. 

In regards to Brighid, I don't have any articles to link you on her (I'll be taking a trip to JSTOR this month) but the Mary Jones write up on her is passable and these two asks from this blog: here and here address the "triple goddess" theories that are so perpetuated in the neo-pagan communities and that you obviously want to avoid.

The fact that you used the terms "spheres of influence" and "each deity" suggests to me that you haven't read a lot of the actual myths. I apologize if I'm wrong.

The Irish gods don't actually have hard-and-fast spheres of influence, and to look for such a thing in them is to misunderstand them and reduce them to less than they are. They don't have spheres of influence; they have skills, they have talents, they have interests--just like mortal, living people--and just like living people, they have personalities. As a side note--because I don't actually know if you're here for information because you are looking to work with Irish deities or if you're just interested in the mythology--you don't go looking to make friends with certain people because of their skillsets, and likewise you don't go looking for professional relationships with people because of their personalities. The gods are the same way--if you are looking for a short-term relationship in order to accomplish a goal, then you're looking for the most appropriate deity to accomplish it. But when looking for long-term, spiritually satisfying relationships, you can be surprised at who you end up forming bonds with. It's one of the best things about working with the Irish deities.

And the other thing--you literally cannot learn everything there is to know about all of them. If you read the Book of Invasions, you will quickly realize that what you're reading is about 75%+ lists of names; between that and the phrase "gods and non-gods," there is actually no way of knowing which of them are deities and which are not, except for the obvious ones where it's explicitly stated somewhere, or else blatantly obvious.

I'm going to recommend that you read The Second Battle of Mag Turedh, as part of it is the most famous story about Dian Cecht as well as because it's just a good place to start reading Irish myth.

Ellis is one of my favorites. If you can find a copy of it "The Book of the Cailleach" by Gearóid Ó Crualaoich would probably be a good choice. If you want misrepresentation then pseudo academic books like "Spellcraft of the Dark Goddess" and "Guise of the Morrigan" are good options that are full of the retranslations and New Age-ing of the war goddesses.

It's sort of a hodge podge to find accurate representations of Celtic practices, as "Celtic" refers to an umbrella of cultures (I'm sure you know this) that all had markedly different treatments of their religious bends.

The reading list on paganachd has some good books to look at, the Carmina Gadelica would be one for sure and Erynn Laurie's book has a good overview of the Celtic worldview, though it is small and not academic in nature.

Oh gosh.

There are so many Irish deities, and they’re so mixed up with other figures who are non-deities, that it’s sort of impossible to make a complete list. It isn’t like other mythologies where you can just go through a cosmogony and list all of the deities—the closest thing is the Book of Invasions, and what that says is “yeah, some of these guys are gods and some are ‘non-gods’ but we’re not going to say who is who.” (if you’re interested, you probably want only the last three books. You can find them here.)

What we can do is dig up material on specific deities, but a full list just isn’t feasible.

This sort of thing depends, entirely, upon three things: the person, the deity, and the overall situation. In other words, my advice would be to keep an eye out for her in your day to day life, but don't be looking for her. The whole point of prayer is faith, no? Have some faith that she's heard you, and trust that she'll be around when you need her.

That is, assuming the "calling," as you said, was from her. I mean, if you've just decided you want to work with her, bear in mind that she doesn't owe it to you to respond.

Best of luck.

You can try looking through Wolf's Morrigan tag, as well as the Morrigan tag she has over at Virtueminehonor. I also have my own tag but it admittedly lacks a lot of information. We have also answered asks about the Morrigan here, here, here, and here. Really though, the myths are a great place to start. I would recommend Cath Maige Turied as well as the Táin Bó Cúailnge. There is also the Caw Squad tag that various Morrigan devotees use to communicate. I would also recommend staying away from books like "Celtic Lore and Spellcraft of the Dark Goddess" by Stephanie Woodfield as well as "Feast of the Morrighan" by Christopher Penczak, as they contain a vast wealth of misinformation.